Rush Limbaugh turns hard left, embraces NFL socialism

[Joanne98]

The spectacular, thrilling, mind-boggling news came Monday: Rush Limbaugh might become one of new owners of the St. Louis Rams.

The great one issued a statement acknowledging a Post-Dispatch report that he had gone partners with Dave Checketts, managing partner of the St. Louis Blues:

"Dave and I are part of a bid to buy the Rams, and we are continuing the process. But I can say no more because of a confidentiality clause in our agreement with Goldman Sachs. We cannot and will not talk about our partners. But if we prevail we will be the operators of the team."

Right away the sniping started: The team will always run to the right. The trainers will have to lock up the painkillers. The team will have to get rid of its black players to please a man who once complained "the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it."

I say bushwah. This is great news. Whatever Limbaugh's racial views are, the man isn't stupid. Without black players, the NFL would be three-on-three football.

Plus he'd be teaming up with Checketts, who's done a good job rebuilding the Blues. Checketts is a devout Mormon who doesn't drink or smoke, so you have to wonder what the partnership meetings would be like, but bidness, as we say in Texas, is bidness.

But the single greatest reason that Rush and the Rams are a good deal is this: It means Rush finally has embraced socialism.

The NFL is the most successful socialist endeavor in the history of the world. More than half of its revenue comes from television and is apportioned equally among its 32 teams.

It makes no difference whether your team is an "achiever," to use Limbaugh's term for one who enjoys success, or a slacker, like ... well, the Rams. Even before you open the gates, you get an equal share of what's now about $4 billion a year in television revenue.

What's more, the home team shares 40 percent of its gate receipts with the visiting team. Say you're the Oakland Raiders, who aren't exactly a stellar attraction. You'll take home $5.1 million from your Thanksgiving Day game at Dallas in the Cowboys' new stadium, which is $2.8 million more than you'd get from selling out your home stadium.

The Vladimir Lenin of NFL socialism was the late Alvin Ray "Pete" Rozelle, whose body is not mummified and entombed under glass at the NFL's Park Avenue headquarters in New York, but should be.

By enforcing socialism and anti-competitive practices, he made the league wildly successful. He turned ordinary guys like the Cardinals' Bill Bidwill, the Steelers' Art Rooney and the Browns' (at the time) Art Modell into billionaires. Rozelle made other billionaires (or collections of millionaires) lust for a toy like theirs, thus ensuring that the value of franchises would climb ever upward.

Another socialist trick to the NFL: Employ artificial scarcity of franchises to create competition among cities to see who can lavish the most goodies on team owners.

Here is where Limbaugh's presence in the owner's box could pay real dividends for St. Louis. Having already given away the candy store to lure the Rams here in 1995, and having assured the team that its stadium would forever be among the eight best in the league, St. Louis now faces a 2014 deadline for keeping that promise.

This is very important to whomever winds up owning the Rams, because revenue from snazzy things like luxury boxes, ticket licenses, club-seat premiums, bars and so forth doesn't have to be shared with other owners. It's the only part of the NFL that's based on the capitalist system.

Except, of course, that the public pays for a lot of it — a mere $300 million of the $1.2 billion cost of the new Cowboys stadium. The $280 million in public-backed bonds that built the entire Edward Jones Dome won't be paid off for at least eight more years, but St. Louis is faced with the possibility of having to cough up more tax dollars to rebuild the stadium before then, lest the owners seek more gullible pastures.

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http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/columnists.nsf/kevinhorrigan/story/0720E14FF9E6A2338625764A00832986?OpenDocument

I also think letting the crummiest teams have first choice in the draft could be characterized as redestribution of talent. And salary caps.......?

[niyad]

1. despise rush, have no interest in football--but love that analysis.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. "the man isn't stupid" - well, he has a business cunning

(look how he makes millions off his gullible idiot listeners and advertisers), but he's an ignorant asshole when it comes to concepts like civility, or civilization for that matter.

Oh, other ways the NFL is socialistic: the annual player draft. The worse your team does, the more of a hand it's given by getting the best new players the next year. And there's a salary cap, so that the teams don't try to outspend each other to attract all the best players while leaving the poorer teams behind.

Plus, compare it with the developed professional soccer leagues in the large European countries, and you notice there's no demotion. The professional leagues in those countries are divided into top divisions, second divisions and so on, and each year, the worst teams in the top division get demoted to the next division down, while others are promoted. And when you drop from the top league, your TV rights income falls off a cliff, because no-one wants to watch the second-best guys. And there's the TV rights from pan-European competitions, which only go to the top few teams from the year before.

[sam sarrha]

3. but can he embrace Black players.. with or without a "Bone in their Nose"

will there be a strike if he buys the team for saying that.??

[AsahinaKimi]

4. I read a news flash somewhere

Where the president of the Players Union wrote to the head of the NFL asking him to consider not allowing Limbaugh to
buy into a team (Rams or other wise)..Whether or not that happens, I guess we shall see.


Head Of NFL Players Union Writes Email Opposing Rush Limbaugh's Attempt To Buy Rams
According to ESPN , the executive director of the NFL players union has written an email to the association's executive committee, detailing his opposition to any purchase of the St. Louis Rams football team by Rush Limbaugh. NFL Players Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith wrote, "I've spoken to the Commissioner and I understand that this ownership consideration is in the early stages. But sport in America is at its best when it unifies, gives all of us reason to...


http://celebrifi.com/gossip/Head-Of-NFL-Players-Union-Writes-Email-Opposing-Rush-Limbaughs-Attempt-To-Buy-Rams-845008.html

[southernyankeebelle]

5. If he becomes an owner its like having a legalized slavery.